We all know that driving a
car without insurance is a very serious offence, and if we are
caught there is a very fair chance that we can lose our driving
licences. Did you know, though, that you could lose it even if you
were not driving it, and were not even in charge of it?

This is been the law since 1988 and yet a huge number of drivers are
still unaware of it. If you lend your car to someone else, and that
person, either purpose or by accident, turns out to be uninsured
then you can be prosecuted for allowing a vehicle to be on the road
without insurance. You may have asked this person whether or not
insurance was in place, and been emphatically informed that there
was; you may think this person to be the most trustworthy individual
on Earth who would never dream of driving without insurance; the
driver may well be convinced, mistakenly, that he or she was insured
to drive the car; none of this matters as far as your guilt or
innocence is concerned; all that the court will be interested in
will be two questions;

(1) did you know that this person was going to drive your car;
(2) if you did know, would you have given permission?

What this means is that if you knowingly allowed a person, who it
subsequently turned out was not properly insured, to drive your car
you would be guilty of the offence. No amount of pleading that you
didn't know that there was no insurance in place would make any
difference to this, the onus is upon you to make absolutely certain
that, at the very minimum, third-party cover had been taken out.
Your only defence would be to accuse the driver of taking the car
without your permission, in which case that person could well face
serious charges relating to this.

If you had to answer a case
like this in court you could face a fine of up to £5000, plus
between six and eight points on your driving licence; a typical
penalty is £200 fine plus six points for a first offence. The
magistrates may, or may not, be impressed if you swear by everything
that is holy to you that you were convinced that the person was
insured to drive the vehicle, and they may, or again may not, show
some lenience but you would still find yourself convicted of a
criminal offence.

The cause of a great deal of misunderstanding is that many people
believe that if they are insured fully comprehensively for another
vehicle they are automatically also insured to drive any vehicles
that they do not own. This is something which varies tremendously
from one insurer to another; some allow it, so stipulate that the
cars can only be the maximum engine size, some stipulate that it
does not refer to family members or anyone else living within the
same household. Drivers under a certain age are often excluded, as
are those who are 'named drivers'. There have you fact been efforts
at government level to take away this type of cover completely from
all car insurance policies, but this has so far been strenuously
resisted by the insurance industry.

In order to protect yourself, if you are thinking of allowing
someone else to drive a vehicle that you own it is essential that
you check that person's insurance documents very carefully; and if
in the slightest doubt you could always insist that the driver
immediately buys some short term car insurance to cover the period
of the loan. At a pinch this could be third-party only cover, which
would ensure that the driver complied with the law, but an upgrade
to fully comprehensive cover would not be terribly expensive and
your car would then be protected in the event of it being damaged in
an accident.